The State of Marketing: 4 highlights from the Salesforce Research report

For the fifth time, Salesforce has released The State of Marketing: a report for which 4.100 Marketing professionals worldwide have been asked about their vision on the future of marketing. In this blog, we’ll share the 4 key highlights of the report.

The connecting factor of Customer Experiences

Almost half of the respondents of the research (45%) indicates the Marketing department is in charge of initiatives within the company related to customer experience. While Marketing used to focus on own channels of functions in the past, nowadays marketeers are more and more focused on supporting other departments in order to create the perfect customer journey.

Data Unification: new insights raise the bar

While marketeers still try to understand their clients and prospects, the number of data sources increases. On average, marketing organizations use 12 different data sources to get a complete picture of needs, preferences and the behavior of clients and prospects. However, stand-alone data by itself is not enough, and even when data is combined, issues like multiple e-mail addresses or points-of-sale can make things complicated. As such, it will be essential to define workflows and solutions to tackle the customer identity problem.

AI and trust: the foundation

While AI offers an unlimited number of possibilities to personalize experiences, the lack of transparent policies in this area has caused a decrease in customer trust. While 88% of the customers is willing to provide personal details in order to receive personalized offers, at the same time, the customer demands to know how their details are being used. Over one third of the marketeers indicates they find it difficult to comply with legislation, like the GDPR in Europe, which results in no more than 44% doing more in this area than the law specifically requires.

Marketeers aim for real-time engagement in all channels

No matter which channel, marketeers want to have real-time engagement. While “engagement” used to be a term linked mainly to social media, nowadays it goes much further. ATMs show transaction-based offers, billboards change depending on the presence of a certain smartphone, etc. Two-way communication, in which Marketeers adapt their strategy based on customer feedback, is becoming the standard: 52% of all marketeers is currently doing this in order to achieve their objectives.

Share this entry

https://www.nextview.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/nextview-logo.svg00nextviewhttps://www.nextview.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/nextview-logo.svgnextview2019-03-15 10:20:562019-03-15 10:25:23The State of Marketing: 4 highlights from the Salesforce Research report